A new 20-year study finds that those who abstain from alcohol are outlived by both moderate (1-3 drinks per day) and heavy drinkers. A number of previous studies have shown abstainers have a higher mortality rate than moderate drinkers, but it had been hypothesized that many of these non-drinkers were actually former alcoholics suffering from chronic alcohol-related diseases.

Today’s New York Times book review of Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers: No More Unnecessary Biopsies, Radical Treatment or Loss of Sexual Potency caught A

ACSH's Jeff Stier wonders if we have failed to learn our lesson from the 9/11 Ground Zero lawsuit after reading that the Department of Veterans Affairs intends to expand Agent Orange disability coverage to include treatment of ischemic heart disease and Parkinson s

In the Reproductive Risk Factors for Incontinence Study at Kaiser (RRISK), researchers found that mothers who never breast-fed were nearly at double the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes (T2D) compared to women who had never had children after studying 2,233 women — 1,828 of whom were mothers — between the ages of 40 to 78 in California.

Bulgaria and Romania, the two poorest nations in the European Union, tried to bolster revenue by increasing excise taxes on cigarettes — with Bulgaria even reversing a national ban on smoking in cafes and restaurants. But their cigarette tax revenue, which accounted for approximately 10 percent of Bulgaria’s revenue last year, has actually decreased by almost a third so far, since smuggling cheaper cigarettes from neighboring countries has created a growing black market.

The MMR vaccine isn’t the only shot under fire: The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) is investigating GlaxoSmithKline’s “swine flu” (H1N1) vaccine Pandemrix to determine if it’s linked to a higher risk of developing narcolepsy after 27 cases of the sleep disorder were reported in Sweden and Finland. While the reported narcolepsy cases occurred soon after the patients received the Pandemrix shot, the EMEA emphasizes that the cause of narcolepsy is still unknown.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reaffirmed Friday a conclusion reached long ago by scientists, upholding a decision that there is no link between autism and vaccines.

BPA has long been blamed by environmental activists for supposedly mimicking the hormone estrogen (although scientists say its estrogenic effects are akin to eating tofu). Now researchers are trying to argue the chemical raises testosterone. A study of 715 Italian men and women aged 20 to 74 published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that men with the highest levels of BPA in their urine also had an increase in their blood testosterone concentrations although all the hormone levels still remained within normal range.

Could those California bears have been watching our own BPA bears?